was the puppet of more artful priests. 3. The conqueror had quiteforgotten his early knack of conquering. 5. The terror of his enemies (for4, the marvel of his age, we pretermit, it being a loose term, that mayapply to any person or thing) was now terrified by his enemies in turn. 6.The love of his people was as heartily detested by them as scarcely anyother monarch, not even his great-grandson, has been, before or since. 7.The arbiter of peace and war was fain to send superb ambassadors to kicktheir heels in Dutch shopkeepers' antechambers. 8. Is again a generalterm. 9. The man fit to be master of the universe was scarcely master ofhis own kingdom. 10. The finished hero was all but finished, in a verycommonplace and vulgar way. And, 11, the man worthy of immortality wasjust at the point of death, without a friend to soothe or deplore him;only withered old Maintenon to utter prayers at his bedside, and croakingJesuit to prepare him, with heavens knows what wretched tricks andmummeries, for his appearance in that Great Republic that lies on theother side of the grave. In the course of his fourscore splendid miserableyears, he never had but one friend, and he ruined and left her. Poor LaValliere, what a sad tale is yours!...

While La Valliere's heart is breaking, the model of a finished hero isyawning; as, on such paltry occasions, a finished hero should. Let herheart break: a plague upon her tears and repentance; what right has she torepent? Away with her to her convent! She goes, and the finished heronever sheds a tear. What a noble pitch of stoicism to have reached! OurLouis was so great, that the little woes of mean people were beyond him;his friends died, his mistresses left him; his children, one by one, werecut off before his eyes, and great Louis is not moved in the slightestdegree! As how, indeed, should a god be moved?...

Out of the window the king's august head was one day thrust, when oldConde was painfully toiling up the steps of the court below. "Don't hurryyourself, my cousin," cries Magnanimity; "one who has to carry so manylaurels can not walk fast." At which all the courtiers, lackeys,mistresses, chamberlains, Jesuits, and scullions, clasp their hands andburst into tears. Men are affected by the tale to this very day. For acentury and three-quarters have not all the books that speak ofVersailles, or Louis Quatorze, told the story?

"Don't hurry yourself, my cousin!" O admirable king and Christian! what apitch of condescension is here, that the greatest king of all the worldshould go for to say anything so kind, and really tell a tottering oldgentleman, worn out with gout, age, and wounds, not to walk too fast!

What a proper fund of slavishness is there in the composition of mankind,that histories like these, should be found to interest and awe them. Tillthe world's end, most likely, this story will have its place in thehistory-books, and unborn generations will read it, and tenderly be movedby it.

I am sure that Magnanimity went to bed that night, pleased and happy,intimately convinced that he had done an action of sublime virtue, and hadeasy slumbers and sweet dreams--especially if he had taken a light supper,and not too vehemently attacked his "en cas de nuit." ...

The king his successor has not left, at Versailles, half so much occasionfor moralizing; perhaps the neigbhboring Parc aux Cerfs would affordbetter illustrations of his reign. The life of his great grandsire, theGrand Llama of France, seems to have frightened Louis the well-beloved;who understood that loneliness is one of the necessary conditions ofdivinity, and, being of a jovial, companionable turn, aspired not beyondmanhood.

Only in the matter of ladies did he surpass his predecessor, as Solomondid David. War he eschewed, as his grandfather bade him; and his simpletaste found little in this world to enjoy beyond the mulling of chocolateand the frying of pancakes. Look, here is the room called Laboratoire duRoi, where, with his own hands, he made his mistress's breakfast; here isthe little door through which, from her apartments in the upper story, thechaste Du Barri came stealing down to the arms of the weary, feeble,gloomy old man.

But of women he was tired long since, and even pancake-frying had palledupon him. What had he to do, after forty years of reign; after havingexhausted everything? Every pleasure that Dubois could invent for his hotyouth, or cunning Lebel could minister to his old age, was flat and stale;used up to the very dregs; every shilling in the national purse had beensqueezed out, by Pompadour and Du Barri and such brilliant ministers ofstate. He had found out the vanity of pleasure, as his ancestor haddiscovered the vanity of glory: indeed, it was high time that he shoulddie. And die he did; and round his tomb, as round that of his grandfatherbefore him, the starving people sang a dreadful chorus of curses, whichwere the only epitaphs for good or for evil that were raised to hismemory....

On the 10th of May, 1774, the whole court had assembled at the chateau;the Oeil de Boeuf was full. The Dauphin had determined to depart as soonas the king had breathed his last. And it was agreed by the people of thestables, with those who watched in the king's room, that a lighted candleshould be placed in a window, and should be extinguished as soon as he hadceased to live.

The candle was put out. At that signal, guards, pages, and squires,mounted on horseback, and everything was made ready for departure. TheDauphin was with the Dauphiness, waiting together for the news of theking's demise. An immense noise, as of thunder, was heard in the nextroom; it was the crowd of courtiers, who were deserting the dead king'sapartment, in order to pay their court to the new power of Louis XVI.

Madame de Noailles entered, and was the first to salute the queen by hertitle of Queen of France, and begged their Majesties to quit theirapartments, to receive the princes and great lords of the court desirousto pay their homage to the new sovereigns. Leaning on her husband's arm, ahandkerchief to her eyes, in the most touching attitude, Marie Antoinettereceived these first visits.

On quitting the chamber where the dead king lay, the Due de Villequierbade Mr. Anderville, first surgeon of the king, to open and embalm thebody: it would have been certain death to the surgeon.

The Duke went away without a word, and the body was neither opened norembalmed. A few humble domestics and poor workmen watched by the remains,and performed the last offices to their master. The surgeons orderedspirits of wine to be poured into the coffin.

They huddled the king's body into a postchaise; and in this deplorableequipage, with an escort of about forty men, Louis, the Well-beloved, wascarried, in the dead of night, from Versailles to Saint-Denis, and thenthrown into the tombs of the kings of France!

If any man is curious, and can get permission, he may mount to the roof ofthe palace, and see where Louis XVI. used royally to amuse himself bygazing upon the doings of all the towns-people below with a telescope.Behold that balcony, where, one morning, he, his queen, and the littleDauphin stood, with Cromwell Grandison Lafayette by their side, who kissedher Majesty's hand, and protected her; and then, lovingly surrounded byhis people, the king got into a coach and came to Paris: nor did hisMajesty ride much in coaches after that....

He is said to have been such a smart journeyman blacksmith that he might,if Fate had not perversely placed a crown on his head, have earned acouple of louis every week by the making of locks and keys. Those who willmay see the workshop where he employed many useful hours: Madame Elizabethwas at prayers meanwhile; the queen was making pleasant parties with herladies; Monsieur the Count d'Artois was learning to dance on thetightrope; and Monsieur de Provence was cultivating l'eloquence du billetand studying his favorite Horace.

It is said that each member of the august family succeeded remarkably wellin his or her pursuits; big Monsieur's little notes are still cited. At aminuet or sillabub, poor Antoinette was unrivaled; and Charles, on thetightrope, was so graceful and so gentil that Madame Saqui might envy him.The time only was out of joint. Oh, curst spite, that ever such harmlesscreatures as these were bidden to right it!

A walk to the little Trianon is both pleasing and moral; no doubt thereader has seen the pretty, fantastical gardens which environ it; thegroves and temples; the streams and caverns (whither, as the guide tellsyou, during the heat of summer, it was the custom of Marie Antoinette toretire with her favorite, Madame de Lamballe): the lake and Swiss villageare pretty little toys, moreover; and the cicerone of the place does notfail to point out the different cottages which surround the piece ofwater, and tell the names of the royal masqueraders who inhabited each.

In the long cottage, close upon the lake, dwelt the Seigneur du Village,no less a personage than Louis XV.; Louis XVI., the Dauphin, was thePailli; near his cottage is that of Monseigneur the Count d'Artois, whowas the Miller; opposite lived the Prince de Conde, who enacted the partof Gamekeeper (or, indeed, any other role, for it does not signify much);near him was the Prince de Rohan, who was the Aumonier; and yonder is thepretty little dairy, which was under the charge of the fair MarieAntoinette herself.

I forget whether Monsieur the fat Count of Provence took any share of thisroyal masquerading; but look at the names of the other six actors of thecomedy, and it will be hard to find any person for whom Fate had suchdreadful visitations in store. Fancy the party, in the days of theirprosperity, here gathered at Trianon, and seated under the tall poplars bythe lake, discoursing familiarly together: suppose, of a sudden, someconjuring Cagliostro of the time is introduced among them, and foretellsto them the woes that are about to come.

"You, Monsieur l'Aumonier, the descendant of a long line of princes, thepassionate admirer of that fair queen who sits by your side, shall be thecause of her ruin and your own, [Footnote: In the diamond-necklaceaffair.] and shall die in disgrace and exile. You, son of the Condes,shall live long enough to see your royal race overthrown, and shall die bythe hands of a hangman. [Footnote: He was found hanging in his own bed-room.] You, oldest son of St. Louis, shall perish by the executioner's ax;that beautiful head, O Antoinette, the same ruthless blade shall sever."

"They shall kill me first," says Lamballe, at the queen's side.

"Yes, truly," says the soothsayer, "for Fate prescribes ruin for yourmistress and all who love her."

[Footnote: Among the many lovers that rumor gave to the Queen, poor Fersenis the most remarkable. He seems to have entertained for her a high andperfectly pure devotion. He was the chief agent in the luckless escape toVarennes; was lurking in Paris during the time of her captivity; and wasconcerned in the many fruitless plots that were made for her rescue.Fersen lived to be an old man, but died a dreadful and violent death. Hewas dragged from his carriage by the mob. In Stockholm, and murdered bythem.--Author's note.]

To whom Monsieur Cagliostro says, scornfully, "You may look forward tofifty years of life, after most of these are laid in the grave. You shallbe a king, but not die one; and shall leave the crown only; not theworthless head that shall wear it. Thrice shall you go into exile; youshall fly from the people, first, who would have no more of you and yourrace; and you shall return home over half a million of human corpses, thathave been made for the sake of you, and of a tyrant as great as thegreatest of your family. Again driven away, your bitterest enemy shallbring you back. But the strong limbs of France are not to be chained bysuch a paltry yoke as you can put on her: you shall be a tyrant, but inwill only; and shall have a scepter, but to see it robbed from your hand."

This I can not say, for here my dream ended. The fact is, I had fallenasleep on one of the stone benches in the Avenue de Paris, and at thisinstant was awakened by a whirling of carriages and a great clattering ofnational guards, lancers, and outriders, in red. His Majesty, LouisPhilippe, was going to pay a visit to the palace; which contains severalpictures of his own glorious actions, and which has been dedicated, byhim, to all the glories of France.

Versailles in 1739

By Thomas Gray

[Footnote: From a letter to his friend West.]

What a huge heap of littleness! It is composed, as it were, of threecourts, all open to the eye at once, and gradually diminishing till youcome to the royal apartments, which on this side present but half a dozenwindows and a balcony. This last is all that can be called a front, forthe rest is only great wings. The hue of all this mass is black, dirtyred, and yellow; the first proceeding from stone changed by age; thesecond, from a mixture of brick; and the last, from a profusion oftarnished gilding. You can not see a more disagreeable tout ensemble; and,to finish the matter, it is all stuck over in many places with small bustsof a tawny hue between every two windows.

We pass through this to go into the garden, and here the case is indeedaltered; nothing can be vaster and more magnificent than the back front;before it a very spacious terrace spreads itself, adorned with two largebasons; these are bordered and lined (as most of the others) with whitemarble, with handsome statues of bronze reclined on their edges. Fromhence you descend a huge flight of steps into a semi-circle formed bywoods, that are cut all around into niches, which are filled withbeautiful copies of all the famous antique statues in white marble. Justin the midst is the bason of Latona; she and her children are standing onthe top of a rock in the middle, on the sides of which are the peasants,some half, some totally changed into frogs, all which throw out water ather in great plenty.

From this place runs on the great alley, which brings you into a completeround, where is the bason of Apollo, the biggest in the gardens. He isrising in his car out of the water, surrounded by nymphs and tritons, allin bronze, and finely executed, and these, as they play, raise a perfectstorm about him; beyond this is the great canal, a prodigious long pieceof water, that terminates the whole. All this you have at one coup d'oeilin entering the garden, which is truly great.

I can not say as much of the general taste of the place: everything youbehold savors too much of art; all is forced, all is constrained aboutyou; statues and vases sowed everywhere without distinction; sugar loavesand minced pies of yew; scrawl work of box, and little squirting jets-d'eau, besides a great sameness in the walks, can not help striking one atfirst sight, not to mention the silliest of labyrinths, and all Aesop'sfables in water; since these were designed "in usum Delphini" only.

Here, then, we walk by moonlight, and hear the ladies and the nightingalessing. Next morning, being Whitsunday, make ready to go to the installationof nine Knights du Saint Esprit. Cambis is one: high mass celebrated withmusic, great crowd, much incense, King, Queen, Dauphin, Mesdames,Cardinals, and Court: Knights arrayed by his Majesty; reverences beforethe altar, not bows, but curtsies; stiff hams; much tittering among theladies; trumpets, kettledrums, and fifes.

Fontainebleau

By Augustus J. C. Hare

[Footnote: From "Days Near Paris."]

The golden age of Fontainebleau came with the Renaissance and Francis I.,who wished to make Fontainebleau the most glorious palace in the world."The Escurial!" says Brantome, "what of that? See how long it was ofbuilding? Good workmen like to be quick finished. With our king it wasotherwise. Take Fontainebleau and Chambord. When they were projected, whenonce the plumb-line, and the compass, and the square, and the hammer wereon the spot, then in a few years we saw the Court in residence there."

Il Rosso was first (1531) employed to carry out the ideas of Francois I.as to painting, and then Sebastian Serlio was summoned from Bologna in1541 to fill the place of "surintendant des bastiments et architecte deFontainebleau." Il Rosso-Giovambattista had been a Florentine pupil ofMichelangelo, but refused to follow any master, having, as Vasari says, "acertain inkling of his own." Francois I. was delighted with him at first,and made him head of all the Italian colony at Fontainebleau, where he wasknown as "Maitre Roux." But in two years the king was longing to patronizesome other genius, and implored Giulio Romano, then engaged on the Palazzodel Te at Mantua, to come to him. The great master refused to comehimself, but in his place sent the Bolognese Primaticcio, who became knownin France as Le Primatice.

The new-comer excited the furious jealousy of Il Rosso, whom he supplantedin favor and popularity, and who, after growing daily more morose, tookpoison in 1541. Then Primaticcio, who, to humor his rival had been sentinto honorable exile (on plea of collecting antiquities at Rome), wassummoned back, and destroyed most of Il Rosso's frescoes, replacing themby his own. Those that remain are now painted over, and no works of IlRosso are still in existence (unless in engravings) except some of hisfrescoes at Florence.

With the Italian style of buildings and decorations, the Italian system ofa Court adorned by ladies was first introduced here under Francois I., andsoon became a necessity.... Under Francois I., his beautiful mistress, theDuchesse d'Etampes--"la plus belle des savantes, et la plus savante desbelles," directed all the fetes. In this she was succeeded, under HenryII., by Diane de Poitiers, whose monogram, interwoven with that of theking, appears in all the buildings of this time, and who is represented asa goddess (Diana) in the paintings of Primaticcio.

Under Francois II., in 1560, by the advice of the queen-mother, anassembly of notables was summoned at Fontainebleau; and here, accompaniedby her 150 beautiful maids of honor, Catherine de Medici received theembassy of the Catholic sovereigns sent to demand the execution of thearticles of the Council of Trent, and calling for fresh persecution of thereformers.

Much as his predecessors had accomplished, Henri IV. did more for theembellishment of Fontainebleau, where the monogram of his mistress,Gabrielle d'Estrees, is frequently seen mingled with that of his wife,Marie de Medici. All the Bourbon kings had a passion for hunting, forwhich Fontainebleau afforded especial facilities.

It was at Fontainebleau that Louis XIII. was born, and that the Marechalde Biron was arrested. Louis XIII. only lived here occasionally. In theearly reign of Louis XIV., the palace was lent to Christina, of Sweden,who had abdicated her throne.

It was in one of the private apartments, occupying the site of the ancientGalerie des Cerfs, now destroyed, that she ordered the execution of herchief equerry, Monaldeschi, whom she had convicted of treason. Shelistened patiently to his excuses, but was utterly unmoved by them and hisentreaties for mercy. She provided a priest to confess him, after which hewas slowly butchered by blows with a sword on the head and face, as hedragged himself along the floor, his body being defended by a coat ofmail....

Even after the creation of the palaces of Versailles and Marly, Louis XIV.continued to make an annual "voyage de Fontainebleau." He compelled hiswhole court to follow him; if any of his family were ill, and unable totravel by road, he made them come by water; for himself, he slept on theway, either at the house of the Duc d'Antin (son of Mme. de Montespan) orof the Marechal de Villeroy.

It was here that the Grand Dauphin was born, in 1661. Here, also, it wasthat Mme. de Maintenon first appeared at the councils, and that the kingpublicly asked her advice as to whether he should accept the throne ofSpain for the Duc d' Anjou. Here, also, in 1685, he signed the revocationof the edict of Nantes. The great Conde died in the palace. Louis XV. wasmarried here to Marie Leczinska in 1725; and here the Dauphin, his son,died in 1765. Louis XIV. delighted in Fontainebleau for its huntingfacilities.

After the Revolution, Napoleon I. restored the chateau and prepared it forPius VII. who came to France to crown him, and was here (January 25, 1813)induced to sign the famous Concordat de Fontainebleau, by which he abjuredhis temporal sovereignty. The chateau which witnessed the abdication ofthe Pope, also saw that of Napoleon I., who made his touching farewell tothe soldiers of the Vielle-Garde in the Cour du Cheval-Blanc, beforesetting off for Elba.... The Cour du Cheval-Blanc, the largest of the fivecourts of the palace, took its name from a plaster copy of the horse ofMarcus Aurelius at Rome, destroyed 1626. Recently it has been called theCour des Adieux, on account of the farewell of Napoleon I. in 1814. It wasonce surrounded by buildings on all sides; one was removed in 1810, andreplaced by a grille.

The principal facade is composed of five pavilions with high roofs, unitedby buildings two stories high. The beautiful twisted staircase in front ofthe central pavilion was executed by Lemercier for Louis XIII., andreplaces a staircase by Philbert Delorme. Facing this pavilion, the massof buildings on the right is the Aile Neuve of Louis XV., built on thesite of the Galerie d'Ulysse, to the destruction of the precious works ofPrimaticcio and Niccolo dell' Abbate, with which it was adorned. Below thelast pavilion, near the grille, was the Grotte du Jardin-des-pins, whereJames V. of Scotland, coming over to marry Magdalen of France, daughter ofFrancois I., watched her bathing with her ladies, by the aid of amirror....

To the west of the Cour du Cheval-Blanc, and communicating with it, is theCour de la Fontaine, the main front of which is formed by the Galerie deFrancois I. This faces the great tank, into which Gaston d' Orleans, ateight years old, caused one of the courtiers to be thrown, whom heconsidered to have spoken to him disrespectfully. One side of the Cour dela Fontaine, that toward the Jardin Anglais, is terminated by a pavilionof the time of Louis XV.; the other, formerly decorated with statues isattributed to Serlio. The fountain from which the court takes its name hasbeen often changed; a poor work by Petitot now replaces the grand designsof the time of Francois I. and Henri IV. Beyond this court we find, on theleft, the Porte Doree, which faces the Chaussee de Maintenon, between theEtang and Parterre; it was built under Francois I., and decorated byPrimaticcio with paintings, restored in 1835. It was by this entrance thatCharles V. arrived at the palace in 1539....

A staircase now leads to the first floor, and we enter the apartments ofNapoleon I., all furnished in the style of the First Empire. The cabinetde l'Abdication is the place where he resigned his power. His bedroom(containing the bed of Napoleon I., the cradle of the King of Rome, and acabinet of Marie Louise) leads to the Salle du Conseil, which was theSalon de Famille under Louis Philippe. Its decorations are by Boucher, andare the best of the period. It was in leaving this room that the Marechalde Biron was arrested under Henri IV., in a cabinet which is now throwninto the adjoining Salle du Trone, (previously the bedroom of the Bourbonkings), dating from Charles IV., but decorated under Louis XIII. A fineportrait by Phillipe de Champaigne represents Louis XIII. It isaccompanied by his device in allusion to his vehemence in theextermination of heresy.

The adjoining boudoir de Marie Antoinette is a beautiful little room,painted by Barthelemy. The metal work of the windows is said to have beenwrought by Louis XVI. himself, who had his workshop here, as atVersailles. The richly decorated Chambre a Coucher de la Reine wasinhabited by Marie de Medici, Marie Therese, Marie Antoinette, MarieLouise, and Marie Amelie. The silk hangings were given by the town ofLyons to Marie Antoinette on her marriage. The Salon de Musique was theSalon du jeu de la Reine, under Marie Antoinette. The ancient Salon deClorinde, or des Dames d' Honneur, is named from its paintings by Duboisand from the "Gerusalemme Liberata."

The Galerie de Diane, built by Napoleon I. and Louis XVIII., replaces thefamous frescoed gallery of Henri IV. It is now turned into a library forthe use of the town. In the center is a picture of Henri IV. on horseback,by Mauzaise. The Salles des Chasses contain pictures of hunting scenesunder Louis XV. We now reach the glorious Galerie d' Henri II. (or Salledes Fetes), built by Francois I., and decorated by Henri II. The walnut-wood ceiling and the paneling of the walls are of marvelous richness. Overthe chimney is a gigantic H, and the initials of Henri II. are constantlyseen interlaced with those of Diane de Poitiers.... The sixty paintings onthe walls, including eight large compositions, were executed by NiccoloDell' Abbate, and are probably the finest decorations of the kind existingin France.

The rooms usually shown last are those formerly inhabited by Catherine deMedici and Anne of Austria, and which, under the First Empire, were usedby Pius VII., under Louis Philippe, by the Duke and Duchess of Orleans.The most interesting of these are the Chambre a Coucher, which bears theoft-repeated A L (the chiffre of Louis XIII. and Anne of Austria), and inwhich Pius VII. daily said mass, and the Salon, with its fine tapestryafter Giulio Romano. The Galerie des Assiettes, adorned with Sevres china,only dates from Louis Philippe. Hence, by a gallery in the Aile Neuve,hung with indifferent pictures, we may visit the Salle du Theatre,retaining its arrangements for the emperor, empress, and court.

The Gardens, as seen now, are mostly as they were rearranged by Lenotrefor Louis XIV. The most frequented garden is the Parterre, entered fromthe Place du Cheval-Blanc. In the center of the Jardin Anglais (enteredthrough the Cour de la Fontaine) was the Fontaine Bleau, which is supposedby some to have given a name to the palace. The Etang has a pavilion inthe center, where the Czar Peter got drunk. The carp in the pool, overfedwith bread by visitors, are said to be, some of them, of immense age. JohnEvelyn mentions the carp of Fontainebleau, "that come familiarly to hand."The Jardin de l' Orangerie, on the north of the palace, called Jardin desBuis under Francois I., contains a good renaissance portal. To the east ofthe parterre and the town is the park, which has no beauty, but harmonizeswell with the chateau.

Visitors should not fail to drive in the Forest, 80 kilometers in circuit,and, if they return late, may look out for its black huntsman--"le grandveneur." ... The forest was a favorite hunting-ground of the kings ofFrance to a late period. It was here that the Marquis de Tourzel, GrandProvost of France, husband of the governess of the royal children,fractured his skull, his horse bolting against a tree, when hunting withLouis XVI., in November, 1786. The forest is the especial land of Frenchartists, who overrun and possess it in the summer. There are innumerabledirection-posts, in which all the red marks--put up by Napoleon III.,because so few peasants could read--point to town.

St. Denis

By Grant Allen

[Footnote: From "Paris."]

About six miles north of the original Paris stands the great Basilica ofSt. Denis--the only church in Paris, and I think in France, called by thatancient name, which carries us back at once to the days of the RomanEmpire, and in itself bears evidence to the antiquity of the spot as aplace of worship. Around it, a squalid modern industrial town has slowlygrown up; but the nucleus of the whole place, as the name itself shows, isthe body and shrine of the martyred bishop, St. Denis. Among the numerousvariants of his legend, the most accepted is that in which the apostle ofParis carries his head to this spot from Montmartre. Others say he wasbeheaded in Paris and walked to Montmartre, his body being afterwardtranslated to the Abbey; while there are some who see in this legend asurvival of the Dionysiac festival and sacrifice of the vine-growers roundParis--Denis--Dionysius--Dionysus.

However that may be, a chapel was erected in 275 above the grave of St.Denis, on the spot now occupied by the great Basilica; and later, Ste.Genevieve was instrumental in restoring it. Dagobert I., one of the fewFrankish kings who lived much in Paris, built a "basilica" in place of thechapel (630), and instituted by its side a Benedictine Abbey. The churchand monastery which possest the actual body of the first bishop and greatmartyr of Paris formed naturally the holiest site in the neighborhood ofthe city; and even before Paris became the capital of a kingdom, theabbots were persons of great importance in the Frankish state.

The desire to repose close to the grave of a saint was habitual in earlytimes, and even (with the obvious alteration of words) ante-datedChristianity--every wealthy Egyptian desiring in the same way to "sleepwith Osiris." Dagobert himself was buried in the church he founded, besidethe holy martyr; and in later times this very sacred spot became for thesame reason the recognized burial place of the French kings. Dagobert'sfane was actually consecrated by the Redeemer Himself, who descended forthe purpose by night, with a great multitude of saints and angels.

The existing Basilica, tho of far later date, is the oldest church of anyimportance in the neighborhood of Paris. It was begun by Suger, abbot ofthe monastery, and sagacious minister of Louis VI. and VII., in 1121. Asyet, Paris itself had no great church, Notre-Dame having been commencedsome 50 years later. The earliest part of Suger's building is in theRomanesque style; it still retains the round Roman arch and many otherRoman constructive features. During the course of the 50 years occupied inbuilding the Basilica, however, the Gothic style was developed; theexisting church therefore exhibits both Romanesque and Gothic work, withtransitional features between the two, which add to its interest.Architecturally, then, bear in mind, it is in part Romanesque, passinginto Gothic. The interior is mostly pure Early Gothic.

The neighborhood to Paris, the supremacy of the great saint, and the factthat St. Denis was especially the Royal Abbey, all combined to give itgreat importance. Under Suger's influence, Louis VI. adopted the oriflammeor standard of St. Denis as the royal banner of France. The Merovingianand Carlovingian kings, to be sure--Germans rather than French--hadnaturally been buried elsewhere, as at Aix-la-Chapelle, Rheims, andSoissons (tho even of them a few were interred beside the great bishopmartyr). But as soon as the Parisian dynasty of the Capets came to thethrone, they were almost without exception buried at St. Denis. Hence theabbey came to be regarded at last mainly as the mausoleum of Frenchroyalty, and is still too often so regarded by tourists.

But tho the exquisite Renaissance tombs of the House of Valois would welldeserve a visit on their own account, they are, at St. Denis, butaccessories to the great Basilica. Besides the actual tombs, too, manymonuments were erected here, in the 13th century (by St. Louis) andafterward, to earlier kings buried elsewhere, some relic of whom, however,the abbey possest and thus honored. Hence several of the existing tombsare of far later date than the kings they commemorate; those of the Valoisalmost alone are truly contemporary.

At the Revolution, the Basilica suffered irreparable losses. The verysacred reliquary containing the severed head of St. Denis was destroyed,and the remains of the martyr and his companions desecrated. The royalbones and bodies were also disinterred and flung into trenchesindiscriminately. The tombs of the kings were condemned to destruction,and many (chiefly in metal) were destroyed or melted down, but not a fewwere saved with difficulty by the exertions of antiquaries, and wereplaced in the Museum of Monuments at Paris (now the Ecole des Beaux-Arts),of which Alexandre Lenoir was curator. Here, they were greatly hackedabout and mutilated, in order to fit them to their new situations.

At the Restoration, however, they were sent back to St. Denis, togetherwith many other monuments which had no real place there; but, being housedin the crypt, they were further clipt to suit their fresh surroundings.Finally, when the Basilica was restored under Viollet-le-Duc, the tombswere replaced as nearly as possible in their old positions; but severalintruders from elsewhere are still interspersed among them. Louis XVIII.brought back the mingled bones of his ancestors from the common trench andinterred them in the crypt. As regards the tombs, again, bear in mindthese facts. All the oldest have perished; there are none here that goback much further than the age of St. Louis, tho they often representpersonages of earlier periods or dynasties. The best are those of theRenaissance period. These are greatly influenced by the magnificent tombof Giangaleazzo Visconti at the Certosa di Pavia, near Milan. Especiallyis this the case with the noble monument of Louis XII., which closelyimitates the Italian work. Now, you must remember that Charles VIII. andLouis XII. fought much in Italy, and were masters of Milan; hence thistomb was familiar to them; and their Italian experiences had much to dowith the French Renaissance. The Cardinal d'Amboise, Louis's minister,built the Chateau de Gaillon, and much of the artistic impulse of the timewas due to these two. Henceforth recollect that tho Francois I. is theprince of the Renaissance, Louis XII. and his minister were no meanforerunners....

The interior is most beautiful. The first portion of the church which weenter is a vestibule or Galilee under the side towers and end of the Nave.Compare Durham. It is of the age of Abbot Suger, but already exhibitspointed arches in the upper part. The architecture is solid and massive,but somewhat gloomy.

Descend a few steps into the Nave, which is surrounded by single aisles,whose vaulting should be noticed. The architecture of this part, now pureEarly Gothic, is extremely lovely. The triforium is delicate and graceful.The windows in the clerestory above it, representing kings and queens, arealmost all modern. Notice the great height of the Nave, and the unusualextent to which the triforium and clerestory project above the noblevaulting of the aisles. Note that the triforium itself opens directly tothe air, and is supplied with stained-glass windows, seen through itsarches. Sit awhile in this light and lofty Nave, in order to take in thebeautiful view up the church toward the choir and chevet. Then walk up tothe Barrier near the Transepts, where sit again, in order to observe theChoir and Transepts with the staircase which leads to the raisedAmbulatory. Observe that the transepts are simple. The ugly stained glassin the windows of their clerestory contains illustrations of the reign ofLouis Philippe, with extremely unpicturesque costumes of the period. Thearchitecture of the Nave and Choir, with its light and airy arches andpillars, is of the later 13th century.

The reason for this is that Suger's building was thoroughly restored from1230 onward, in the pure pointed style of that best period. The upper partof the Choir, and the whole of the Nave and Transepts was then rebuilt--which accounts for the gracefulness and airiness of its architecture whencontrasted with the dark and heavy vestibule of the age of Suger.

Note from this point the arrangement of the Choir, which, to those who donot know Italy, will be quite unfamiliar. As at San Zeno in Verona, SanMiniato in Florence, and many other Romanesque churches, the Choir israised by some steps above the Nave and Transepts; while the Crypt isslightly deprest beneath them. In the Crypt, in such cases, are the actualbodies of the saints buried there; while the Altar stands directly overtheir tombs in the Choir above it.

Marly-Le-Roi

By Augustus J. C. Hare

[Footnote: From "Days Near Paris."]

The tram stops close to the Abreuvoir, a large artificial tank, surroundedby masonry for receiving the surplus water from the fountains in thepalace gardens, of which it is now the only remnant. Ascending the avenueon the right, we shall find a road at the top which will lead us, to theleft, through delightful woods to the site of the palace. Nothing remainsbut the walls supporting the wooded terrace.

It is difficult to realize the place as it was, for the quincunces oflimes which stood between the pavilions on either side of the steep avenueleading to the royal residence, formerly dipt and kept close, are now hugetrees, marking still the design of the grounds, but obscuring the views,and, by their great growth, making the main avenue very narrow. St. Simonexaggerates the extravagance of Louis XIV. at Marly, who spent there fourand a half million francs between 1679 and 1690, and probably as much ormore between 1690 and 1715, perhaps in all ten or twelve millions, whichwould represent fifty million francs at the present time. Nevertheless theexpense of the amusements of Louis XIV. greatly exceeded the whole revenueof Henri IV., and those of the early years of Louis XIII.

From the central pavilion in which the flattery of Mansart placed him asthe sun, Louis XIV. emerged every morning to visit the occupiers of thetwelve smaller pavilions, Les Pavilions des Seigneurs, the constellations,his courtiers, who came out to meet him and swelled his train. Thesepavilions, arranged on each side of the gardens, stood in double avenuesof clipt lime-trees looking upon the garden and its fountains, and leadingup to the palace.

The device of the sun was carried out in the palace itself, where all thesmaller apartments circled round the grand salon, the king and queenhaving apartments to the back, the dauphin and dauphine to the front, eachapartment consisting of an anteroom, bedroom, and sitting-room, and eachset being connected with one of the four square saloons, which opened uponthe great octagonal hall, of which four faces were occupied by chimney-pieces and four by the doors of the smaller saloons. The central halloccupied the whole height of the edifice, and was lighted from the upperstory.

The great ambition of every courtier was to be of the Marly circle, andall curried favor with the king by asking to accompany him on his weeklyjourney to Marly. The Court used to arrive at Marly on a Wednesday andleave it on a Saturday; this was an invariable rule. The king alwayspassed his Sundays at Versailles, which was his parish. ... The leadingfigure at Marly was Mme. de Maintenon, who occupied the apartmentsintended for Queen Marie Therese, but who led the simplest of lives, boredalmost to extinction. She used to compare the carp languishing in thetanks of Marly to herself--"Like me they regret their native mud." ... Atfirst Mme. de Maintenon dined, in the midst of the other ladies in thesquare salon which separated her apartment from that of the king; but soonshe had a special table, to which a very few other ladies, her intimates,came by invitation.

Marly was the scene of several of the most tragic events in the life ofLouis XIV. "Everything is dead here, there's no life in any thing," wrotethe Comtesse de Caylus, niece of Mme. de Maintenon, from Marly to thePrincess des Ursins, after the death of the Duchesse de Bourgogne. And, ina few days afterward, Marly was the scene of the sudden death of theDauphin, Duc de Bourgogne, the beloved pupil of Fenelon. Early in themorning after the death of his wife, he was persuaded, "ill and anguishedwith the most intimate and bitterest of sorrows," to follow the king toMarly, where he entered his own room by a window on the ground floor.

It was also at Marly--"ill-omened Marly"--that the Duc de Berry, theyounger grandson of Louis XIV., and husband of the profligate daughter ofthe Duc d' Orleans--afterward Regent, died, with great suspicion ofpoison, in 1714. The MS. memorials of Mary Beatrice by a sister ofChaillot, describe how, when Louis XIV. was mourning his belovedgrandchildren, and that queen, whom he had always liked and respected, hadlost her darling daughter Louisa, she went to visit him at Marly where"they laid aside all Court etiquette, weeping together in their commongrief, because, as the Queen said, 'We saw that the aged were left, andthat death had swept away the young.'" St. Simon depicts the last walk ofthe king in the gardens at Marly on August 10, 1715. He went away thatevening to Versailles, where he died on September 1.

Marly was abandoned during the whole time of the Regency, and was onlysaved from total destruction in 1717, when the Regent Philippe d'Orleanshad ordered its demolition, by the spirited remonstrance of St. Simon....The great pavilion itself only contained, as we have seen, a very smallnumber of chambers. The querulous Smollett, who visited Marly in 1763,speaks of it as "No more than a pigeon-house in respect to a palace." Butit was only intended as the residence of the king.

During the repairs necessary in the reign of Louis XV., who built Choisyand never lived at Marly, the cascade which fell behind the great pavilionwas removed. Mme. Campan describes the later Marly of Louis XVI., underwhom the "Marly journey" had become one of the great burdens and expensesof royal life. The Court of Louis XVI. was here for the last time on June11, 1789, but in the latter years of Louis XVI., M. de Noailles, governorof St. Germain, was permitted to lend the smaller pavilions furnished tohis friends for the summer months. Marly perished with the monarchy, andwas sold at the Revolution, when the statues of its gardens were removedto the Tuileries. A cotton mill was for a time established in the royalpavilion; then all the buildings were pulled down and the gardens sold inlots!

Still the site is worth visiting. The Grille Royale, now a simple woodengate between two pillars with vases, opens on the road from St. Germain toVersailles, at the extremity of the Aqueduct of Marly. Passing this, onefinds oneself in an immense circular enclosure, the walls of whichsurround the forest on every side.

The Village of Auteuil

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

[Footnote: From "Outre-Mer." Published by Houghton, Mifflin Co.]

The sultry heat of summer always brings with it, to the idler and the manof leisure, a longing for the leafy shade and the green luxuriance of thecountry. It is pleasant to interchange the din of the city, the movementof the crowd, and the gossip of society, with the silence of the hamlet,the quiet seclusion of the grove, and the gossip of a woodland brook.

It was a feeling of this kind that prompted me, during my residence in theNorth of France, to pass one of the summer months at Auteuil, thepleasantest of the many little villages that lie in the immediate vicinityof the metropolis. It is situated on the outskirts of the Bois deBoulogne, a wood of some extent, in whose green alleys the dusty cityenjoys the luxury of an evening drive, and gentlemen meet in the morningto give each other satisfaction in the usual way. A cross-road, skirtedwith green hedge-rows, and overshadowed by tall poplars, leads you fromthe noisy highway of St. Cloud and Versailles to the still retirement ofthis suburban hamlet. On either side the eye discovers old chateaux amidthe trees, and green parks, whose pleasant shades recall a thousand imagesof La Fontaine, Racine, and Moliere; and on an eminence, overlooking thewindings of the Seine, and giving a beautiful tho distant view of thedomes and gardens of Paris, rises the village of Passy, long the residenceof our countrymen Franklin and Count Rumford....

It was to the Bois de Boulogne that I looked for my principal recreation.There I took my solitary walk, morning and evening; or, mounted on alittle mouse-colored donkey, paced demurely along the woodland pathway. Ihad a favorite seat beneath the shadow of a venerable oak, one of the fewhoary patriarchs of the wood which had survived the bivouacs of the alliedarmies. It stood upon the brink of a little glassy pool, whose tranquilbosom was the image of a quiet and secluded life, and stretched itsparental arms over a rustic bench, that had been constructed beneath itfor the accommodation of the foot-traveler, or, perchance, some idledreamer like myself. It seemed to look round with a lordly air upon itsold hereditary domain, whose stillness was no longer broken by the tap ofthe martial drum, nor the discordant clang of arms; and, as the breezewhispered among its branches, it seemed to be holding friendly colloquieswith a few of its venerable contemporaries, who stooped from the oppositebank of the pool, nodding gravely now and then, and gazing at themselveswith a sigh in the mirror below....

I entered, too, with some enthusiasm, into all the rural sports andmerrimakes of the village. The holidays were so many little eras of mirthand good feeling; for the French have that happy and sunshine temperament--that merry-go-mad character--which renders all their social meetingsscenes of enjoyment and hilarity. I made it a point never to miss any ofthe fetes champetres, or rural dances, at the wood of Boulogne; tho Iconfess it sometimes gave me a momentary uneasiness to see my rusticthrone beneath the oak usurped by a noisy group of girls, the silence anddecorum of my imaginary realm broken by music and laughter, and, in aword, my whole kingdom turned topsy-turvy with romping, fiddling, anddancing. But I am naturally, and from principle, too, a lover of all thoseinnocent amusements which cheer the laborer's toil, and, as it were, puttheir shoulders to the wheel of life, and help the poor man along with hisload of cares. Hence I saw with no small delight the rustic swain astridethe wooden horse of the carrousel, and the village maiden whirling roundand round in its dizzy car; or took my stand on the rising ground thatoverlooked the dance, an idle spectator in a busy throng. It was justwhere the village touched the outward border of the wood. There a littlearea had been leveled beneath the trees, surrounded by a painted rail,with a row of benches inside. The music was placed in a slight balcony,built around the trunk of a large tree in the center; and the lamps,hanging from the branches above, gave a gay, fantastic, and fairy look tothe scene. How often in such moments did I recall the lines of Goldsmith,describing those "kinder skies" beneath which "France displays her brightdomain," and feel how true and masterly the sketch--

"Alike all ages; dames of ancient days Have led their children through the mirthful maze, And the gray grandsire, skilled in gestic lore, Has frisked beneath the burden of threescore."

Nor must I forget to mention the fete patronale--a kind of annual fair,which is held at midsummer, in honor of the patron saint of Auteuil. Thenthe principal street of the village is filled with booths of everydescription; strolling players, and rope-dancers, and jugglers, andgiants, and dwarfs, and wild beasts, and all kinds of wonderful shows,excite the gaping curiosity of the throng; and in dust, crowds, andconfusion, the village rivals the capital itself. Then the goodly dames ofPassy descend into the village of Auteuil; then the brewers of Billancourtand the tanners of Sevres dance lustily under the greenwood tree; andthen, too, the sturdy fishmongers of Bretigny and Saint-Yon regale theirfat wives with an airing in a swing, and their customers with eels andcrawfish....

I found another source of amusement in observing the various personagesthat daily passed and repassed beneath my window. The character which mostof all arrested my attention was a poor blind fiddler, whom I first sawchanting a doleful ballad at the door of a small tavern near the gate ofthe village. He wore a brown coat, out at elbows, the fragment of a velvetwaistcoat, and a pair of tight nankeens, so short as hardly to reach belowhis calves. A little foraging cap, that had long since seen its best days,set off an open, good-humored countenance, bronzed by sun and wind. He wasled about by a brisk, middle-aged woman, in straw hat and wooden shoes;and a little barefooted boy, with clear, blue eyes and flaxen hair, held atattered hat in his hand, in which he collected eleemosynary sous. The oldfellow had a favorite song, which he used to sing with great glee to amerry, joyous air, the burden of which ran "Chantons l'amour et leplaisir!" I often thought it would have been a good lesson for the crabbedand discontented rich man to have heard this remnant of humanity--poor,blind, and in rags, and dependent upon casual charity for his daily bread,singing in so cheerful a voice the charms of existence, and, as it were,fiddling life away to a merry tune.

I was one morning called to my window by the sound of rustic music. Ilooked out and beheld a procession of villagers advancing along the road,attired in gay dresses, and marching merrily on in the direction of thechurch. I soon perceived that it was a marriage-festival. The processionwas led by a long orang-outang of a man, in a straw hat and white dimitybobcoat, playing on an asthmatic clarionet, from which he contrived toblow unearthly sounds, ever and anon squeaking off at right angles fromhis tune, and winding up with a grand flourish on the guttural notes.Behind him, led by his little boy, came the blind fiddler, his honestfeatures glowing with all the hilarity of a rustic bridal, and, as hestumbled along, sawing away upon his fiddle till he made all crack again.Then came the happy bridegroom, drest in his Sunday suit of blue, with alarge nosegay in his button-hole; and close beside him his blushing bride,with downcast eyes, clad in a white robe and slippers, and wearing awreath of white roses in her hair. The friends and relatives brought upthe procession; and a troop of village urchins came shouting along in therear, scrambling among themselves for the largess of sous and sugar-plumsthat now and then issued in large handfuls from the pockets of a lean manin black, who seemed to officiate as master of ceremonies on the occasion.I gazed on the procession till it was out of sight; and when the lastwheeze of the clarionet died upon my ear, I could not help thinking howhappy were they who were thus to dwell together in the peaceful bosom oftheir native village, far from the gilded misery and the pestilentialvices of the town.

On the evening of the same day, I was sitting by the window, enjoying thefreshness of the air and the beauty and stillness of the hour, when Iheard the distant and solemn hymn of the Catholic burial-service, at firstso faint and indistinct that it seemed an illusion. It rose mournfully onthe hush of evening--died gradually away--then ceased. Then, it roseagain, nearer and more distinct, and soon after a funeral processionappeared, and passed directly beneath my window. It was led by a priest,bearing the banner of the church, and followed by two boys, holding longflambeaux in their hands. Next came a double file of priests in theirsurplices, with a missal in one hand and a lighted wax taper in the other,chanting the funeral dirge at intervals--now pausing, and then againtaking up the mournful burden of their lamentation, accompanied by others,who played upon a rude kind of bassoon, with a dismal and wailing sound.Then followed various symbols of the church, and the bier borne on theshoulders of four men. The coffin was covered with a velvet pall, and achaplet of white flowers lay upon it, indicating that the deceased wasunmarried. A few of the villagers came behind, clad in mourning robes, andbearing lighted tapers. The procession passed slowly along the same streetthat in the morning had been thronged by the gay bridal company. Amelancholy train of thought forced itself home upon my mind. The joys andsorrows of this world are so strikingly mingled! Our mirth and grief arebrought so mournfully in contact! We laugh while others weep--and othersrejoice when we are sad! The light heart and the heavy walk side by sideand go about together! Beneath the same roof are spread the wedding-feastand the funeral-pall! The bridal-song mingles with the burial-hymn! Onegoes to the marriage-bed, another to the grave; and all is mutable,uncertain, and transitory.

It is with sensations of pure delight that I recur to the brief period ofmy existence which was passed in the peaceful shades of Auteuil. There isone kind of wisdom which we learn from the world, and another kind whichcan be acquired in solitude only. In cities we study those around us; butin the retirement of the country we learn to know ourselves.

[Illustration: Paris: Interior of the Grand Opera House]

[Illustration: Paris Front of the Grand Opera House]

[Illustration: Arc de Triomphe]

[Illustration: Arch Erected by Napoleon, Near the Louvre]

[Illustration: Paris: Church of St. Vincent de Paul]

[Illustration: Paris: Church of St. Sulpice]

[Illustration: Picture Gallery at Versailles]

[Illustration: Versailles: Bed-Room of Louis XIV]

[Illustration: The Grand Trianon at Versailles]

[Illustration: The Little Trianon at Versailles]

[Illustration: Bed-Room of Catherine de Medici at Chaumont]

[Illustration: Marie Antoinette's Dairy at Versailles]

[Illustration: Tours From Turner's "Rivers of France"]

[Illustration: Saint Denis From Turner's "Rivers of France"]

[Illustration: Havre From Turner's "Rivers of France"]

[Illustration: The Bridge of St. Cloud From Turner's "Rivers of France"]

The Two Trianons

By Augustus J. C. Hare

[Footnote: From "Days Near Paris."]

The Trianons may be reached in half an hour from the railway station, butthe distance is considerable, and a carriage very desirable, consideringall the walking inside of the palaces to be accomplished. Carriages takethe straight avenue from Bassin de Neptune. The pleasantest way for foot-passengers is to follow the gardens of Versailles as far as the Bassind'Apollon, and then turn to the right. At the end of the right branch ofthe grand canal, staircases lead to the park of the Grand Trianon; butthese staircases are railed in, and it is necessary to make a detour tothe Grille de la Grande Entree, whence an avenue leads directly to theGrand Trianon, while the Petit Trianon lies immediately to the right,behind the buildings of the Concierge and Corps de Garde.

The original palace of the Grand Trianon was a little chateau built byLouis XIV., in 1670, as a refuge from the fatigues of the Court, on landbought from the monks of St. Genevieve, and belonging to the parish ofTrianon. But in 1687 the humble chateau was pulled down, and the presentpalace erected by Mansart in its place.

Louis XIV. constantly visited the Grand Trianon, with which for many yearshe was much delighted. But, after 1700, he never slept at Trianon, and,weary of his plaything here, turned all his attention to Marly. UnderLouis XV., however, the palace was again frequently inhabited.

Being entirely on one floor, the Grand Trianon continued to be a mostuncomfortable residence, till subterranean passages for service were addedunder Louis Philippe, who made great use of the palace. The buildings arewithout character or distinction. Visitors have to wait in the vestibuletill a large party is formed, and are then hurried full speed round therooms, without being allowed to linger for an instant.

The Petit Trianon was built by Gabriel for Louis XV. in the botanicalgarden which Louis XIV. had formed at the instigation of the Duc d'Ayen.It was intended as a miniature of the Grand Trianon, as that palace hadbeen a miniature of Versailles. The palace was often used by Louis XV.,who was here first attacked by the smallpox, of which he died. Louis XVI.gave it to Marie Antoinette, who made its gardens, and whose happiest dayswere spent here.

The Petit Trianon is a very small and very unassuming country house. Mme.de Maintenon describes it in June as "a palace enchanted and perfumed."Its pretty simple rooms are only interesting from their associations. Thefurniture is mostly of the times of Louis XVI. The stone stair has ahandsome iron balustrade; the salons are paneled in white.

Here Marie Antoinette st to Mme. Lebrun for the picture in which she isrepresented with her children. In the dining-room is a secretaire given toLouis XVI. by the States of Burgundy, and portraits of the King and MarieAntoinette. The Cabinet de Travail of the queen was a cabinet given to heron her marriage by the town of Paris; in the Salle de Reception are fourpictures by Watteau; the Boudoir has a Sevres bust of the queen; in theChambre-a-coucher is the queen's bed, and a portrait of the Dauphin byLebrun. These simple rooms are a standing defense of the queen from thefalse accusations brought against her at the Revolution as to herextravagance in the furnishing of the Petit Trianon. Speaking of her happydomestic life, Mme. Lebrun says: "I do not believe Queen Marie Antoinetteever allowed an occasion to pass by without saying an agreeable thing tothose who had the honor of being near her."

Malmaison

By Augustus J. C. Hare

[Footnote: From "Days Near Paris."]

The station is opposite a short avenue, at the end of which on the right,is the principal entrance to Malmaison. A little higher up the road at theright is a gate leading to the park and gardens, freely open to thepublic, and being sold (1887) in lots by the Stat. There is a melancholycharm in the old house of many recollections--grim, empty, and desolate;approached on this side by a bridge over the dry moat. A short distanceoff, rather to the left, as you look from the house, is a very prettylittle temple--the Temple of Love--with a front of columns of red Givetmarble brought from the chateau of Richelieu, and a clear stream burstingfrom the rocks beneath it.

Malmaison is supposed to derive its name from having been inhabited in theXI century by the Norman brigand Odon, and afterward by evil spirits,exorcised by the monks of St. Denis. Josephine bought the villa with itsgardens, which had been much praised by Delille, from M. Lecouteulx deCanteleu for 160,000 francs.... Josephine retired to Malmaison at the timeof her divorce, and seldom left it afterward.... In 1814, the unhappyJosephine, whose heart was always with Napoleon, was forced to receive avisit from the allied sovereigns at Malmaison, and died of a chill whichshe caught in doing the honors of her grounds to the Emperor Alexander onMay 26, by a water excursion on the pool of Cucufa. After his return fromElba, Napoleon revisited the place....

After the loss of the battle of Waterloo, Napoleon once more retired toMalmaison, then the property of the children of Josephine, Eugene andHortense. There he passed June 25, 1815, a day of terrible agitation. Thatevening at five o'clock he put on a brown suit of civilian clothes,tenderly embraced Queen Hortense and the other persons present, gave along lingering look at the house and gardens connected with his happiesthours, and left them for ever.

After the second Restoration Prince Eugene sold Malmaison, removing itsgallery of pictures to Munich. There is now nothing remarkable in thedesolate rooms, tho the Salle des Marechaux, the bedroom of Josephine, andthe grand salon, with a chimney-piece given by the Pope are pointed out.In later years the house was for some time inhabited by Queen Christina ofSpain. It will be a source of European regret if at least the buildingconnected with so many historic souvenirs, and the immediate grounds arenot preserved.

St. Germain

By Leitch Ritchie

[Footnote: From "The Rivers of France." Pictures by J. M.W. Turner, R.A. Text by Leitch Ritchie.]

The view from the terrace of Saint Germain is one of the finest in France.This view, and a shady walk in the forest behind, are the only attractionsof Saint Germain; for the old palace of the kings of France presents theappearance of nothing more than a huge, irregular, unsightly brickbuilding. It is true, a great portion of the walls is of cut stone; butthis is the idea which the whole conveys to the spectator. The edificestands on the site of a chateau built by Louis-le-Gros, which, having beenburned down by the English, was thus raised anew from its ruins. CharlesV., Francois II., Henry IV., Louis XIII., and Louis XIV., all exercisedtheir taste upon it, and all added to its general deformity.

Near this Henri Quatre built another chateau, which fell into ruins fortyor fifty years ago. These ruins were altogether effaced by Charles X., whohad formed the project of raising another structure upon the spot,entirely his own. The project, however, failed, like that of the coupd'etat, but this is of no consequence. The new chateau exists in variousbooks of travel, written by eye-witnesses, quite as palpably as theenormous bulk of the ancient chateau. It is a true "castle in Spain."Among the sights to be seen in the palace is the chamber of Mademoisellede la Valliere, and the trap-door by which she was visited by LouisQuatorze. There are also the chamber and oratory of our James II., whodied at Saint Germain, on the 16th September, 1701.

The forest of Saint Germain is seven leagues in circumference, pierced inevery direction by roads and paths, and containing various edifices thatwere used as hunting-lodges. This vast wood affords no view, except alongthe seemingly interminable path in which the spectator stands, the vistaof which, carried on with mathematical regularity, terminates in a point.This is the case with all the great forests of France except that ofFontainebleau, where nature is sometimes seen in her most picturesqueform. In the more remote and unfrequented parts of Saint Germain, the wildboar still makes his savage lair; and still the loiterer, in theselengthened alleys, is startled by a roebuck or a deer springing across thepath....

Independently of the noble satellites attached to the court, the infinitenumber of official persons made its removal to Saint Germain, or the otherroyal seats, seem like the emigration of a whole people. Forty-ninephysicians, thirty-eight surgeons, six apothecaries, thirteen preachers,one hundred and forty maitres d'hotel, ninety ladies of honor to thequeen, in the sixteenth century! There were also an usher of the kitchen,a courier de vin (who took the charge of carrying provisions for the kingwhen he went to the chase), a sutler of court, a conductor of the sumpter-horse, a lackey of the chariot, a captain of the mules, an overseer ofroasts, a chair-bearer, a palmer (to provide ananches for Easter), a valetof the firewood, a paillassier of the Scotch guard, a yeoman of the mouth,and a hundred more for whose offices we have no names in English.

The grand maitre d'hotel was the chief officer of the court. The royalorders came through him; he regulated the expenses; and was, in short, tothe rest of the functionaries, what the general is to the army. The maitredes requetes was at the head of civil justice; the prevot de l'hotel atthe head of criminal justice....

When the courtiers presented themselves at the chateau, some in chariots,some on horseback, with their wives mounted behind them (the ladies allmasked), they were subjected to the scrutiny of the captain of the gate.The greater number he compelled to dismount; but the princes andprincesses, and a select few who had brevets of entrance, were permittedto ride within the walls.

At court the men wore sword and dagger; but to be found with a gun orpistol in the palace, or even in the town, subjected them to a sentence ofdeath. To wear a casque or cuirass was punished with imprisonment. Thelaws of politeness were equally strict. If one man used insulting words toanother, the offense was construed as being given to the king; and theoffender was obliged to solicit pardon of his majesty. If one threatenedanother by clapping his hand to the hilt of his sword, he was to beassomme according to the ordinance; which may either mean knocked down, orsoundly mauled--or the two together. If two men came to blows, they wereboth assomme. A still more serious breach of politeness, however, was theimportunity of petitioners.

When the king hunted he was accompanied by a hundred pages, two hundredesquires, and often four or five hundred gentlemen; sometimes by the queenand princesses, with their hundreds of ladies and maids of honor, mountedon palfreys saddled with black velvet.

St. Cloud

By Augustus J. C. Hare

[Footnote: From "Days Near Paris."]

Very near the station is the Chateau de St. Cloud, set on fire by thebombs of Mont-Valerien, in the night of October 13, 1870, and now the mostmelancholy of ruins. Sufficient, however, remains to indicate the noblecharacter of a building partly due to Jules Hardouin and Mansart. Thechateau is more reddened than blackened by the fire, and the beautifulreliefs of its gables, its statues, and the wrought-iron grilles of itsbalconies are still perfect. Grass, and even trees, grow in its rooflesshalls, in one of which the marble pillars and sculptured decorations areseen through the gaps where windows once were. The view from the terraceis most beautiful.

The name of St. Cloud comes from a royal saint, who was buried in thecollegiate church, pulled down by Marie Antoinette (which stood oppositethe modern church), and to whose shrine there is an annual pilgrimage.Clodomir, King of Orleans, son of Clovis, dying in 524, had bequeathed histhree sons to the guardianship of his mother Clotilde. Their barbarousuncles, Childebert and Clotaire, coveting their heritage, sent theirmother a sword and a pair of scissors, asking her whether she would preferthat they should perish by the one, or that their royal locks should beshorn with the other, and that they should be shut up in a convent.

"I would rather see them dead than shaven," replied Clotilde proudly. Twoof the princes were then murdered by their uncles, the third, Clodowald,was hidden by some faithful servants, but fright made him cut off his hairwith his own hands, and he entered a monastery at a village then calledNogent, but which derived from him the name of St. Clodowald, corruptedinto St. Cloud.

Clodowald bequeathed the lands of St. Cloud to the bishops of Paris, whohad a summer palace here, in which the body of Francois I. lay in stateafter his death at Rambouillet. His son, Henri II., built a villa here inthe Italian style; and Henri III. came to live here in a villa belongingto the Gondi family, while, with the King of Navarre, he was besiegingParis in 1589. The city was never taken, for at St. Cloud Henri wasmurdered by Jacques Clement, a monk of the Jacobin convent in Paris, whofancied that an angel had urged him to the deed in a vision....

From this time the house of the banker Jerome Gondi, one of the Italianadventurers who had followed the fortunes of Catherine de Medici, was anhabitual residence of the Court. It became the property of Hervard,Controller of Finances, from whom Louis XIV. bought it for his brotherPhilippe d'Orleans, enlarged the palace, and employed Lenotre to lay outthe park. Monsieur married the beautiful Henriette d'Angleterre, youngestdaughter of Charles I., who died here, June 30, 1670, with strongsuspicion of poison. St. Simon affirms the person employed to have confestto Louis XIV., having used it at the instigation of the Chevalier deLorraine (a favorite of Monsieur), whom Madame had caused to be exiled.One of the finest sermons of Bossuet describes the "disastrous night onwhich there came as a clap of thunder the astonishing news! 'Madame isdying! Madame is dead!' At the sound of so strange a wo people hurried toSt. Cloud from all sides to find panic over all except the heart of theprincess."

In the following year Monsieur was married again, to the PrincessPalatine, when it was believed that his late wife appeared near a fountainin the park, where a servant, sent to fetch water, died of terror. Thevision turned out to be a reality--a hideous old woman, who amused herselfin this way. "The cowards," she said, "made such grimaces that I nearlydied laughing. This evening pleasure paid me for the toil of my hard day."

Monsieur gave magnificent fetes to the Court at St. Cloud, added to thepalace with great splendor, and caused the great cascade, which JeromeGondi had made, to be enlarged and embellished by Mansart. It was at St.Cloud that Monsieur died of an attack of apoplexy, brought on byovereating after his return from a visit to the king at Marly.... Thechateau continued to be occupied by Madame, daughter of the Elector, therude, the original, and satirical Princess Palatine, in whom the modernHouse of Orleans has its origin, and here she died during the regency ofher son....

The Regent d'Orleans, nephew of Louis XIV., received Peter the Great atSt. Cloud in 1717. In 1752 his grandson, Louis Philippe d'Orleans, gave atSt. Cloud one of the most magnificent fetes ever seen in France.

In 1785 the Due d'Orleans sold St. Cloud for six million francs to QueenMarie Antoinette, who made great alterations in the internal arrangementsof the building, where she resided during the early days of theRevolution.

It was at St. Cloud that the coup d'etat occurred which made Napoleonfirst-consul. This led him to choose the palace of St. Cloud, which hadbeen the cradle of his power, as his principal residence, and, under thefirst empire, it was customary to speak of "le cabinet de Saint-Cloud," aspreviously of "le cabinet de Versailles," and afterward of "le cabinet desTuileries." Here, in 1805, Napoleon and Josephine assisted at the baptismof the future Napoleon III....

It was also in the palace of St. Cloud that Napoleon I. was married toMarie Louise, April 1, 1810. In this palace of many changes the alliedsovereigns met after the fall of the First Empire. Blucher, after hisfashion, slept booted and spurred in the bed of Napoleon; and thecapitulation of Paris was signed here July 3, 1815.

Louis XVIII. and Charles X. both lived much at St. Cloud, and added to itconsiderably; but here, where Henry IV. had been recognized as King ofFrance and Navarre, Charles X. was forced by the will of the people toabdicate, July 30, 1830. Two years after, Louis Philippe establishedhimself with his family at St. Cloud, and his daughter Clementine wasmarried to Duke Augustus of Saxe-Coburg in its chapel, April 28, 1843.Like his uncle, Napoleon III. was devoted to St. Cloud, where--"with alight heart"--the declaration of war with Prussia was signed in thelibrary, July, 17, 1870, a ceremony followed by a banquet, during whichthe "Marseillaise" was played. The doom of St. Cloud was then sealed. Onthe 13th of the following October the besieged Parisians beheld thevolumes of flame rising behind the Bois de Boulogne, which told that St.Cloud, recently occupied by the Prussians, and frequently bombarded inconsequence from Mont-Valerien, had been fired by French bombs.

The steamer for St. Cloud descends the Seine, passing under the Pont deSolferino, Pont de la Concorde, Pont des Invalides, and Pont d'Alma. Thenthe Champ de Mars is seen on the left, the Palais du Trocadero on theright. After the Pont du d'Iena, Passy is passed on the right, and the Iledes Cygnes on the left. Then comes the Pont de Grenelle, after whichAuteuil is passed on the right and Javel on the left. After leaving thePont-viaduc du Point-du-Jour, the Ile de Billancourt is seen on the left.After the Pont de Billancourt, the steamer passes between the Iles deBillancourt and Seguin to Bas Meudon.

III

OLD PROVENCE

The Papal Palace at Avignon

By Charles Dickens

[Footnote: From "Pictures From Italy."]

There lay before us, that same afternoon, the broken bridge of Avignon,and all the city baking in the sun; yet with an underdone-piecrust,battlemented wall, that never will be brown, tho it bake for centuries.

The grapes were hanging in clusters in the streets, and the brilliantoleander was in full bloom everywhere. The streets are old and verynarrow, but tolerably clean, and shaded by awnings stretched from house tohouse. Bright stuffs and handkerchiefs, curiosities, ancient frames ofcarved wood, old chairs, ghostly tables, saints, virgins, angels, andstaring daubs of portraits, being exposed for sale beneath, it was veryquaint and lovely. All this was much set off, too, by the glimpses onecaught, through a rusty gate standing ajar, of quiet sleepy court-yards,having stately old houses within, as silent as tombs. It was all very likeone of the descriptions in the Arabian Nights. The three one-eyedCalenders might have knocked at any one of those doors till the streetrang again, and the porter who persisted in asking questions--the man whohad the delicious purchases put into his basket in the morning--might haveopened it quite naturally.

After breakfast next morning, we sallied forth to see the lions. Such adelicious breeze was blowing in, from the north, as made the walkdelightful, tho the pavement-stones, and stones of the walls and houses,were far too hot to have a hand laid on them comfortably.

We went, first of all, up a rocky height, to the cathedral, where Mass wasperforming to an auditory very like that of Lyons, namely, several oldwomen, a baby, and a very self-possest dog, who had marked out for himselfa little course or platform for exercise, beginning at the altar-rails andending at the door, up and down which constitutional walk he trotted,during the service, as methodically and calmly, as any old gentleman outof doors. It is a bare old church, and the paintings in the roof are sadlydefaced by time and damp weather; but the sun was shining in, splendidly,through the red curtains of the windows, and glittering on the altarfurniture; and it looked as bright and cheerful as need be.

Hard by the cathedral stands the ancient Palace of the Popes, of which oneportion is now a common jail, and another a noisy barrack; while gloomysuites of state apartments, shut up and deserted, mock their own old stateand glory, like the embalmed bodies of kings. But we neither went there tosee state rooms, nor soldiers' quarters, nor a common jail, tho we droptsome money into a prisoners' box outside, while the prisoners, themselves,looked through the iron bars, high, up, and watched us eagerly. We went tosee the ruins of the dreadful rooms in which the Inquisition used to sit.

A little, old, swarthy woman, with a pair of flashing black eyes--proofthat the world hadn't conjured down the devil within her, tho it had hadbetween sixty and seventy years to do it in--came out of the BarrackCabaret, of which she was the keeper, with some large keys in her hands,and marshaled us the way that we should go. How she told us, on the way,that she was a Government Officer (concierge du palais apostolique), andhad been, for I don't know how many years; and how she had shown thesedungeons to princes; and how she was the best of dungeon demonstrators;and how she had resided in the palace from an infant--had been born there,if I recollect right--I needn't relate.

But such a fierce, little, rapid, sparkling, energetic she-devil I neverbeheld. She was alight and flaming, all the time. Her action was violentin the extreme. She never spoke, without stopping expressly for thepurpose. She stamped her feet, clutched us by the arms, flung herself intoattitudes, hammered against walls with her keys, for mere emphasis: nowwhispered as if the Inquisition were there still; now shrieked as if shewere on the rack herself; and had a mysterious, hag-like way with herforefinger, when approaching the remains of some new horror--looking backand walking stealthily and making horrible grimaces--that might alone havequalified her to walk up and down a sick man's counterpane, to theexclusion of all other figures, through a whole fever.

Passing through the courtyard, among groups of idle soldiers, we turnedoff by a gate, which this She-Goblin unlocked for our admission, andlocked again behind us; and entered a narrow court, rendered narrower byfallen stones and heaps of rubbish; part of it choking up the mouth of aruined subterranean passage, that once communicated (or is said to havedone so) with another castle on the opposite bank of the river. Close tothis courtyard is a dungeon--we stood within it, in another minute--in thedismal tower of oubliettes, where Rienzi was imprisoned, fastened by aniron chain to the very wall that stands there now, but shut out from thesky which now looks down into it.

A few steps brought us to the Cachots, in which the prisoners of theInquisition were confined for forty-eight hours after their capture,without food or drink, that their constancy might be shaken, even beforethey were confronted with their gloomy judges. The day has not got inthere yet. They are still small cells, shut in by four unyielding, close,hard walls; still profoundly dark; still massively doored and fastened, asof old.

Goblin, looking back as I have described, went softly on, into a vaultedchamber, now used as a store-room; once the Chapel of the Holy Office. Theplace where the tribunal sat, was plain. The platform might have beenremoved but yesterday. Conceive the parable of the Good Samaritan havingbeen painted on the wall of one of these Inquisition chambers! But it was,and may be traced there yet.

High up in the wall, are niches where the faltering replies of the accusedwere heard and noted down. Many of them had been brought out of the verycell we had just looked into, so awfully; along the same stone passage. Wehad trodden in their very footsteps.

I am gazing round me, with the horror that the place inspires, when Goblinclutches me by the wrist, and lays, not her skinny finger, but the handleof a key, upon her lip. She invites me, with a jerk, to follow her. I doso. She leads me out into a room adjoining--a rugged room, with a funnel-shaped, contracting roof, open at the top, to the bright day, I ask herwhat it is. She folds her arms,, leers hideously, and stares. I ask again.She glances round, to see that all the little company are there; sits downupon a mound of stones; throws up her arms, and yells out, like a fiend,"La Salle de la Question!"

The Chamber of Torture! And the roof was made of that shape to stifle thevictim's cries! Oh Goblin, Goblin, let us think of this awhile, insilence. Peace, Goblin! Sit with your short arms crossed on your shortlegs, upon that heap of stones, for only five minutes, and then flame outagain.... A cold air, with an earthy smell, falls upon the face ofMonsieur; for she has opened, while speaking, a trap-door in the wall.Monsieur looks in. Downward to the bottom, upward to the top, of a steep,dark lofty tower; very dismal, very dark, very cold. The Executioner ofthe Inquisition, says Goblin, edging in her head to look down also, flungthose who were past all further torturing, down here. "But look! doesMonsieur see the black stains on the wall?" A glance, over his shoulder,at Goblin's keen eye, shows Monsieur--and would without the aid of thedirecting-key--where they are. "What are they?" "Blood!"

In October, 1791, when Revolution was at its height here, sixty persons;men and women ("and priests," says Goblin, "priests"); were murdered, andhurled, the dying and the dead, into this dreadful pit, where a quantityof quicklime was tumbled down upon their bodies. Those ghastly tokens ofthe massacre were soon no more; but while one stone of the strong buildingin which the deed was done, remains upon another, there they will lie inthe memories of men, as plain to see as the splashing of their blood uponthe wall is now.... Goblin's finger is lifted; and she steals out again,into the Chapel of the Holy Office. She stops at a certain part of theflooring. Her great effect is at hand. She waits for the rest. She dartsat the brave courier, who is explaining something; hits him a sounding rapon the hat with the largest key; and bids him be silent. She assembles usall, round a little trap-door in the floor, as round as grave.

"Voila!" she darts down at the ring, and flings the door open with acrash, in her goblin energy, tho it is no light weight. "Voila lesoubliettes! Voila les oubliettes! Subterranean! Frightful! Black!Terrible! Deadly! Les oubliettes de l'Inquisition!"

My blood ran cold, as I looked from Goblin, down into the vaults, wherethese forgotten creatures, with recollections of the world outside--ofwives, friends, children, brothers--starved to death, and made the stonesring with their unavailing groans. But, the thrill I felt on seeing theaccurst wall below, decayed and broken through, and the sun shining inthrough its gaping wounds, was like a sense of victory and triumph.

I felt exalted with the proud delight of living, in these degeneratetimes, to see it. As if I were the hero of some high achievement! Thelight in the doleful vaults was typical of the light that has streamed in,on all persecution in God's name, but which is not yet at its noon! It cannot look more lovely to a blind man newly restored to sight, than to atraveler who sees it, calmly and majestically, treading down the darknessof that Infernal Well.

Goblin, having shown les oubliettes, felt that her great coup was struck.She let the door fall with a crash, and stood upon it with her armsa-kimbo, sniffing prodigiously.

When we left the place, I accompanied her into her house, under the outergateway of the fortress, to buy a little history of the building. Hercabaret, a dark low room, lighted by small windows, sunk in the thickwall--in the softened light, and with its forge-like chimney; its littlecounter by the door, with bottles, jars, and glasses on it; its householdimplements are scraps of dress against the wall; and a sober looking woman(she must have a congenial life of it, with Goblin) knitting at the door--looked exactly like a picture by Ostade.

I walked round the building on the outside, in a sort of dream, and yetwith the delightful sense of having awakened from it, of which the light,down in the vaults, had given, me the assurance. The immense thickness andgiddy height of the walls, the enormous strength of the massive towers,the great extent of the building, its gigantic proportions, frowningaspect, and barbarous irregularity, awaken awe and wonder.

The recollection of its opposite old uses; an impregnable fortress, aluxurious palace, a horrible prison, a place of torture, the court of theInquisition; at one and the same time, a house of feasting, fighting,religion, and blood, gives to every stone in its huge form a fearfulinterest, and imparts new meaning to its incongruities. I could think oflittle, however, then, or long afterward, but the sun in the dungeons.

The palace coming down to be the lounging-place of noisy soldiers, andbeing forced to echo their rough talk and common oaths, and to have theirgarments fluttering from its dirty windows, was some reduction of itsstate, and something to rejoice at; but the day in its cells, and the skyfor the roof of its chambers of cruelty--that was its desolation anddefeat! If I had seen it in a blaze from ditch to rampart, I should havefelt that not that light, nor all the light in all the fire that burns,could waste it, like the sunbeams in its secret council-chamber and itsprisons.

The Building of the Great Palace

By Thomas Oakey

[Footnote: From "The Story of Avignon." Published by E.P. Dutton & Co.]

It will now be convenient briefly to trace the growth of that remarkableedifice, at once a castle and a cloister, a palace and a prison, whichconstitutes the chief attraction of Avignon to-day, and which, althodefaced by time and by modern restorers, remains in its massive grandeur afitting memorial of the great line of pontiffs who have made that littlecity famous in the annals of Christendom.

We have seen that Pope John XXII., having allotted a piece of land to hisnephew, Arnaud de Via, for the erection of a new episcopal palace, wascontent to modify and enlarge the old one for pontifical uses, and thatBenedict XII., with characteristic straightforwardness, purchased the newfabric from Arnaud's heirs and, having handed it over to the diocesanauthorities, proceeded to transform the old building into a stately andspacious apostolic palace for the head of Christendom.

He was moved to this purchase after mature reflection, for it was a matterof urgent importance that the pontiff of the church of Rome should possessa palace of his own at Avignon as long as it might be necessary for him toremain there. The relation between Curia and Episcopate being thus clearlydefined, Benedict appointed a compatriot, Pierre Poisson de Mirepoix,master of the works, and, since about two-thirds of the existing palacedates from Benedict's reign, Pierre Poisson may be regarded as its firstarchitect.

More, probably, is known of the construction of the papal palace ofAvignon than of any other relic of medieval architecture. Thanks to theresearches of Father Ehrle, Prefect of the Vatican Library, and otherscholars, the sums paid to the contractors, their names, the estimates ofquantities, the wages of the chief workmen, and the price of materials,are before us, and we can trace day by day and month by month the progressof the great pile. The whole of the craftsmen, with the exception of thelater master painters from Italy and some northern sculptors, were eitherAvignonais, Gascons or Provencals.

The first work undertaken by Pierre was the enlargement of the papalchapel of John XXII. This was doubled in length, and the lavishdecorations executed by John's master painter, Friar Pierre Dupuy, werecontinued on the walls of the added portion; payments for white, green,indigo, vermilion, carmine and other pigments, and for colored tiles,testify to the brilliancy of its interior.

Meanwhile work was proceeding on the massy new tower, the Turris Magna,now known as the Tour des Anges, the best preserved of all the old towers.The foundations were laid on April 3, 1335, and it was roofed with lead onMarch 18, 1337. The basement formed the papal wine-cellar; the groundfloor was the treasury, or strong room, where the specie, the jewels, theprecious vessels of gold and silver and other valuables were stored; manypayments are recorded for locks and bars and bolts for their safe-keepingwithin the ten-feet-thick walls of the tower.

The next great work put in hand was the east wing, which was raised on aspace left by John's demolished, or partially demolished, structure. OnNovember 20, 1337, two masons (lapiscidarios), Pierre Folcaud and JeanChapelier, and a carpenter, Jacques Beyran, all of Avignon, contracted tocarry out the plans of a new architect, Bernard Canello, for thecompletion of Benedict's private apartments, and on the same day LambertFabre and Martin Guinaud, housewreckers, were paid eighty-three goldflorins on account, for the demolition of the old buildings. This wing,since wholly remodeled by the legates and the modern corps of engineers,comprised the papal Garde Robe, the Garde Meuble, the private kitchen andoffices and, on the floor above, the papal dining-room, study and privateoratory. The walls were, of course, embattlemented, and in 1337 the mostexposed portions of the new buildings were defended by a stout rampart....

The whole ground floor, 110 feet by 33, was occupied by a great receptionhall (Camera Paramenti), where distinguished visitors were accorded afirst welcome before being admitted to a private audience, or accorded asolemn state reception in consistory, as the import of their embassydemanded. The popes were also used to receive the cardinals there, and twodoorkeepers were appointed who must be faithful, virtuous and honest menand sleep in the hall; their office being one of great trust, was highlypaid, and they were generally laymen. It was probably in this hall thatSt. Catherine was received by Clement VI. The Avignon conclaves were heldthere, for on December 31, 1352, four hundred and fifteen days' andnights' labor were employed in breaking down the walls between the dining-hall and the Camera Paramenti, clearing away the stones and making secretchambers for the lord cardinals, in which chambers were twenty-eightcells....

On September 5, 1339, John's old belfry was pulled down and Jean Mauser deCarnot, who asserted he had excavated 11,300 basketfuls of rubbish, waspaid at the rate of twelve deniers the hundred for the work. Evidentlythese were good times for the basket makers as well as builders. December22, 1340, three contractors, Isnard and Raymond Durand and JacquesGasquet, received 1,273 florins for the completed new tower, with itsbarbicans, battlements and machicoulis, which was on the site and whichretained the appellation of the Tour de la Campane, or Bell Tower. Theembattlemented and machicolated summit, but not the chastelet, of thismighty tower has recently been restored; its walls are nearly twelve feetthick....

Benedict's last undertaking was the erection of the Tour de Trouillas,next the Tour des Latrines, and on April 20, 1341, sixteen rubbish basketswere bought for the "Saracens that excavated the foundations of the turrisnova." The Tour de Trouillas, tallest and stoutest of the keeps of themighty fortress, is 175 feet high as compared with the 150 feet of theTour de la Campane, and its walls fifteen feet thick as compared withtwelve feet. It should be noted, however, that the latter tower appearsthe taller owing to the elevated ground whereon, it stands....

Having bought, by private agreement or by arbitration, all the housesadjacent to the palace on the south side, Clement next proceeded todemolish them and on the site to raise the noblest and most beautiful wingof the great palace. This edifice, known to contemporaries as the greatnew palace, comprised a spacious Chapel and Hall of Justice; and in August9, 1344, contracts were made for cutting away and leveling the rock abovethe present Rue Peyrolerie, whereon, by October 21, 1351, the masons hadraised their beautiful building.

On that day, by order of our lord the pope, one hundred florins werehanded over by the papal chamber to Master John of Loubieres to distributeamong the masters to celebrate the placing of the keystone in the vaultingof the new chapel of the palace and the completion of the said chapel. OnAll Saints' Day of that same year Clement recited (a month before hisdeath) the first solemn mass in his great new chapel and preached a mosteloquent sermon, praising God for the completion of his life's work. Thelower hall, most famous of judicial chambers in Christendom and finalCourt of Appeal in all questions of international and ecclesiastical law,was later in opening.

Among the amenities of the old palace were the spacious and lovely gardenson the east, with their clipt hedges, avenues of trees, flower-beds andcovered and frescoed walls, all kept fresh and green by channels of water.John maintained a menagerie of lions and other wild and strange beasts;stately peacocks swept proudly along the green swards, for the inventoryof 1369 specifies seventeen peacocks, some old and some young, whereof sixwere white.

* * * * *

But we have as yet dealt chiefly with the external shell of this mass ofarchitecture which, tall and mighty, raises its once impregnable walls andtowers against the sky. The beauty of its interior remains briefly to betouched upon, for the fortress palace had, as Clement left it, someanalogy with the great Moorish palace of the Alhambra in that it stoodoutwardly grim and strong, while within it was a shrine of exquisite andluxurious art.

The austere Benedict, who, his biographer tells us, left the walls of theconsistory naked, appears to have expended little on the pictorialdecorations of the halls and chambers erected during his pontificate; butwith the elevation of the luxurious and art-loving Clement VI., a newspirit breathes over the fabric. The stern simplicity and noble strengthof his predecessor's work assume an internal vesture of richness andbeauty; the walls glow with azure and gold; a legion of Gallic sculptorsand Italian painters lavish their art on the embellishment of thepalace....

Such, in brief outline, was the progress of the mighty fabric and itsinternal decoration which the great popes of Avignon raised to be theirdwelling-place, their fortress, and the ecclesiastical center ofChristendom. Tho shorn of all its pristine beauty and robbed of much ofits symmetry, it stands to-day in bulk and majesty, much as it stood atthe end of Clement VI.'s reign, when a contemporary writer describes it asa quadrangular edifice, enclosed within high walls and towers andconstructed in most noble style, and tho it was all most beautiful to lookupon, there were three parts of transcendent beauty: the Audientia, theCapella major, and the terraces: and these were so admirably planned andcontrived that peradventure no palace comparable to it was to be found inthe whole world. The terraces referred to were those raised over the greatchapel, and were formed of stone, bedded in asphalt and laid on a stagingof stout oak joists; the view from the terraces was unparalleled for rangeand beauty.

The glowing splendor of frescoed walls was enhanced by gorgeous hangingsand tapestries and by the magnificent robes and jewels of popes andcardinals. Crowds of goldsmiths--forty were employed at the papal court--embroiderers and silk mercers, made Avignon famous thoughout Europe. In1337, 318 florins were paid for eight Paris carpets; in 1343 Clement VI.paid 213 florins for green silk hangings, and 254 florins for carpetsadorned with roses; in 1348, 400 gold and silver vessels turned the scalesat 862 marks, 5 ounces; in the inventory of 1369, despite the fact thatthe most precious had been sent to Rome, the gold vessels were weighed outat 1,434 marks, 1 ounce; the silver at 5,525 marks 7 ounces.

A cardinal's hat cost from 15 to 40 florins, and in 1348, 150 florins werepaid for one piece of scarlet for the pope, and 75 to 100 florins for thegarniture of a riding cloak. Clement VI. spent 1,278 florins in thepurchase of cloth of gold, woven by the Saracens of Damascus; one paymentto Jacopo Malabayla of Arti for summer and winter clothing for the papalhousehold amounted to 6,510 florins, and the same obviously Hebrewmerchant received 10,652 florins in 1341 for cloth and ermine and beaver;in 1347 Clement's furrier received 1,080 ermine skins, whereof 430 wereused in one cloak, 310 for a mantle, 150 for two hoods, and 88 for ninebirettas; in 1351, 2,258 florins went to Tuscany for silk, and 385 forbrocade to Venice.

The richness of the papal utensils beggars description; jeweled cups,flagons of gold, knife handles of jasper and ivory, forks of mother-of-pearl and gold. A goldsmith in 1382 was paid 14 florins for repairing twoof the last-named implements. The flabelli, or processional feather fans,cost 14 florins; Benedict XIII., paid 300 florins for an enameled silverbit; the Golden Roses cost from 100 to 300 florins. Presents of jewelswere costly and frequent. Gregory XI. gave 168 pearls, value 179 francs,to the citizens of Avellino; Clement VII. presented the Duke of Burgundywith a ring of gold, worth 335 florins; an aguiere of gold and pearls,valued at 1,000 florins, and two tables each over 200 florins. Richergifts were lavished on sovereign princes. Reliquaries were of prodigiousvalue; the gold cross containing a piece of the true cross at theCelestins weighed fifteen pounds. In 1375 a silver arm for the image ofSt. Andrew cost over 2,566 florins.

The cardinals were equally munificent. The most striking example of lavishsplendor is afforded by the State banquet given to Clement V., by theCardinals Arnaud de Palegrue and Pierre Taillefer in May, 1308. Clement,as he descended from his litter, was received by his hosts and twentychaplains, who conducted him to a chamber hung with richest tapestriesfrom floor to ceiling; he trod on velvet carpet of triple pile; his state-bed was draped with fine crimson velvet, lined with white ermine; thesheets of silk were embroidered with silver and gold.

The table was served by four papal knights and twelve squires, who eachreceived silver girdles and purses filled with gold from the hosts. Fiftycardinals' squires assisted them in serving the banquet, which consistedof nine courses of three plates each--twenty-seven dishes in all. Themeats were built up in fantastic form: castles, gigantic stags, boars,horses, etc. After the fourth service, the cardinal offered his holiness amilk-white steed worth 400 florins; two gold rings, jeweled with anenormous sapphire and a no less enormous topaz; and a bowl, worth 100florins; sixteen cardinal guests and twenty prelates were given rings andjewels, and twelve young clerks of the papal house and twenty-foursergeants-at-arms received purses filled with florins.

After the fifth service, a great tower with a font whence gushed forthfive sorts of choicest wines was carried in; and a tourney was run duringthe interval between the seventh and eighth courses. Then followed aconcert of sweetest music, and dessert was furnished by two trees--one ofsilver, bearing rarest fruits of all kinds, and the other loaded withsugared fruits of many colors. Various wines were then served, whereuponthe master cooks, with thirty assistants, executed dances before theguests. Clement, by this time, having had enough, retired to his chamber,where, lest he might faint for lack of refreshment during the night, wineand spices were brought to him; the entertainment ended with dances anddistractions of many kinds.

There is no reason to believe that the Avignon popes, either in theirhousehold expenditure or in their personal luxury, were more extravagantthan their Roman predecessors or successors. Yet amid all this luxury,strange defects of comfort appear to the modern sense. Windows, as we haveseen, were generally covered with wax cloth or linen, carpets were rare,and rushes were strewn on the floors of most of the rooms. From May toNovember, 1349, more than 300 loads of rushes were supplied for use in thedining-rooms and chambers of the apostolic palace. Subsequently mats wereintroduced, and in 1352 Pierre de Glotos, mat-maker to the palace of ourlord and pope, was paid for 275 cannae of matting for the palace ofAvignon and for the palace beyond the Rhone and the new chapel.

The Walls of Avignon

By Thomas Oakey

[Footnote: From "The Story of Avignon." Published by E.P. Dutton & Co.]

Intimately associated with the history of the palace of the Popes ofAvignon is that of the unparalleled circuit of walls and towers whichdefended the city from the scourge of organized robber bands during thefourteenth century. The earliest quadrilateral fortifications embraced arelatively small area consisting of the Rocher des Doms and the parishesof St. Agricol, St. Didier, and St. Pierre; these walls, demolished andrebuilt on a more extensive scale in the twelfth century, embraced an areaeasily traceable on the modern map, from the Porte du Rhone, round theRues du Limas, Joseph Vernet, des Lices, Philonarde, Campane, TroisColombes, to the Rocher.

It was these fortifications that the Cardinal St. Angelo forced thecitizens to raze in 1227. Until the acquisition of Avignon by Clement VI.,the city was an open one and only defended by a double fosse. The originof the papal walls has already been traced, and their subsequent fate maynow be briefly given. The assaults of the Rhone proved more destructivethan human artillery. The walls and towers having been hastily raised,towers fell by reason of bad foundation, and the upkeep of thefortifications was a continual drain on papal and communal finances.

In 1362 an irresistible flood of waters overthrew the Fortes St. Micheland Limbert, and large breaches were often made by these recurringinundations. Moreover, the expansion of the city of old and the need ofaccess to the suburbs involved frequent displacement and opening of newgates. In 1482 the whole system of the defensive works was modified tomeet the new situation caused by the introduction of gunpowder. The gatesmost exposed to attack were further defended by outworks, that of St.Lazare having been fortified during the rule of Giuliano della Rovere bythe addition of a powerful bastide, with three round towers, a drawbridge,a new fosse which communicated with the great fosse before the main walls.Other modifications took place during the Huguenot wars.

Notwithstanding many repairs during the intervening centuries, thefortifications had, under the second Empire, suffered sad degradation, andat length Viollet-le-Duc was entrusted with their restoration. The famousarchitect set to work on their southern side and had completed about one-third of the restoration when the disastrous issue of the Franco-Prussianwar arrested all further progress until the Third Republic feebly resumedthe task. The walls along the Rhone, especially useful in time of flood,were backed with stone, their battlements and machicoulis renewed. Thevisitor, however, will need no reminder that the present passive aspect ofthe ramparts conveys but a faint impression of their former state, when abroad and deep fosse, seven feet by twelve, washed their bases, abovewhich they raised their once impregnable curtains full thirty feet.

Two of the old gates have been demolished--the Porte de Limbert in 1896,and the Porte de l'Oulle in 1900--the former, many times repaired, was theonly existing example of the external aspect of a medieval gate, thelatter had been rebuilt in 1786 in the Doric style. A new gate, the PortePetrarque, now the Porte de la Republique, was erected by Viollet-le-Ducwhen the walls were pierced for the new street; the Porte St. Dominique isalso new. These noble mural defenses, three miles in circuit, twicenarrowly escaped demolition--at the construction of the railway, when theywere saved by a vigorous protest of Prosper Merimee, and in 1902, when, onthe pretext that they blocked the development of the city, themunicipality decided to demolish the unrestored portions. Luckily theintervention of a public-spirited Prefect of Vaucluse proved successful,and they were again rescued from the housewrecker's pick. No visitor toAvignon should omit to walk or drive round the famous ramparts.

Their stones have been subjected to careful scrutiny by antiquarians andthe masons' marks (tacherons)--about 4,500--carefully examined and reducedto about four hundred and fifty types. Opinions differ as to the meaningof these curious signs, but there is little doubt that M. Maire'ssuggestion is the correct one--the workmen were paid by the piece, andeach had his own private mark which he cut on the stones he laid and thusenabled the foreman to check his work.

We begin at the Porte du Rhone, and skirt the older part of the walls onthe northwest with their different style of corbels and machicoulis. M.Maire has no hesitation in assigning this portion to the time of ClementVI., by reason of the coarser nature of the masons' marks. Turningsouthwards, we pass the Porte St. Dominique, and reach the Porte St. Roch(formerly the Porte du Chamfleury, and only opened at plague times) andthe Porte de la Republique. We soon note the unrestored portions, the siteof the old Porte Limbert, and turn northward to the Porte St. Lazare.

Before we reach this gate we may fitly make a digression, and in piousmemory of a great Englishman, fare along the Avenue du Cimetiere to thegrave of John Stuart Mill, who with his wife lies buried within thecemetery under an elder-tree on the right and toward the end of Avenue 2.A plain stone slab bears the well-known inscription to Mrs. Mill's memory--the noblest and most eloquent epitaph ever composed by man for woman. Itis pleasant to remember that Mill has left golden opinions of hisgentleness and generosity behind him at Avignon. His house, a charminglittle hermitage approached by an avenue of plane trees not far from thecemetery, was sold in 1905, and a few relics were bought and still arecherished by the rare friends the somewhat self-centered philosopher madein the city. The present owner has preserved the library and study, wherethe "Essay on Liberty" was written, much as it was in Mill's days.

To the peasants who met the tall, bent, spare figure, musing andbotanizing along the country lanes and fields, he was known as "MonsieurEmile." Before he left the city on his periodical visits to England, Millwas wont to leave 300 francs with M. Rey, pastor of the Protestant Churchin Avignon: two hundred for expenses of public worship; one hundred forthe poor, always charging M. Rey to write to England if any further needarose.

Mill, a great Englishman of European fame, to the amazement of his Frenchfriends, was followed to his last resting-place by no more than fivemourners. As we write news comes that the civic authorities have decidedto recall to posterity the association of the great thinker with Avignonby giving the name of Stuart Mill to a new boulevard, and that a bust hasbeen unveiled to his memory near the pleasant city he loved so well. Millwas much gratified that his pamphlet on "The Subjection of Women"converted Mistral to the movement for their enfranchisement, and theirlegal equality with men.

Villeneuve and the Broken Bridge

By Thomas Oakey

[Footnote: From "The Story of Avignon." Published by E.P.Dutton & Co.]

The royal city of Villeneuve, altho geographically and politicallysundered from Avignon and the County Venaissin, was socially andeconomically bound up with the papal city. The same reason that to-dayimpels the rich citizens of Avignon to dot the hills of Languedoc withtheir summer villas was operative in papal times, and popes and cardinalsand prelates loved to build their summer places on the opposite bank ofthe Rhone.

How silent and neglected are the streets of this once wealthy andimportant city! How degraded its monuments, how faded its glory! In thehot, dusty afternoon, as the cranky old omnibus rattles along the narrowHigh Street, it appears to awaken echoes in a city of the dead.

Making our way northward, we pass the restored seventeenth-century portalof the palace of the sainted Cardinal of Luxembourg; the weather-worn,neglected, late Renaissance portal of the so-called Hotel de Conti; theruined Gothic portal of the palace of Cardinal Pierre de Thury, throughwhich we pass to the old court-yard and a chapel subsequently restored andnow used as the chapel of the Grey Penitents.

We pass many another relic of departed grandeur, and beyond the PlaceNeuve on our right come upon a great portal which opens on a vaultedpassage leading to one of the most bewildering and extraordinary congeriesof ruined monastic buildings in France, now inhabited by a population ofpoor folk--two hundred families, it is said--who, since the Revolution,have settled in the vast buildings of the once famous and opulentCharterhouse of Villeneuve. Founded by Innocent VI., three years after hiselevation to the papal chair, and enriched by subsequent endownments, theCharterhouse of the Val de Benediction, the second in importance of theOrder, grew in wealth and importance during the centuries until it wassacked and sold in small lots during the Revolution to the ancestors ofthe present occupants.

The circuit of its walls was a mile in extent; its artistic treasures wereprodigious. The Coronation of the Virgin came thence; the Pieta ofVilleneuve, now in the Louvre; the founder's tomb; the high altar of NotreDame at Villeneuve, and a few other relics, alone survive of its vastpossessions. The scene resembles nothing so much as a city ruined bybombardment or earthquake, but how long the wreck will remain in itspresent picturesque and melancholy condition is difficult to forecast. Thestate is slowly buying out the owners, and doubtless ere many years arepassed the more valuable artistic remains will have been swept andgarnished and restored.

As we return from the Chartreuse we turn left along the Place Neuve, andclimb to the mighty fort of St. Andre, which occupies the most venerablesite in the royal new city, for on the hill where it stands traditionrelates that St. Cesarie, Bishop of Arles, was buried, and that there, inthe sixth century, the first Benedictines settled. The primitivesettlement, destroyed in the ninth century, was extensively rebuilt in980, and within its walls, churches were dedicated to St. Andrew, St.Michael, and St. Martin. In the twelfth century the rich and powerfulmonastery, a strongly fortified, self-sufficing community, was held underthe counts of Toulouse, and from their overlordship it was subsequentlyadmitted by the counts to be within the territory of the republic ofAvignon, whose consuls in 1210 compelled the abbot to demolish his wallsand promise never to rebuild them.

In 1292 Philip the Fair was permitted to settle a small community there,to whom he accorded in 1293 valuable privileges and the same protection hegranted to his good city of Paris. Philip, to whom the position wasvaluable as a frontier post, erected a castle there, maintained a royalgarrison, and the new settlement became known as the New Town(Villeneuve). The walls and towers then raised were rebuilt in 1352 byJohn the Good, who exacted a toll, known as St. Andrew's penny, formaintenance on all merchandise that passes through the Senechaussee ofBeaucaire.

Of these majestic ruins, restored in the sixteenth century and again inrecent times, the Tour des Masques at the west angle with its simplebattlements is the oldest portion, the massive machicolated towers thatfrown over the main entrance having been raised by John the Good. Theruined ravelin dates back to the seventeenth century. We enter and strollabout the desolate interior, crowned by a tiny Romanesque chapel of thetwelfth century, that well deserves its name of Our Lady of the Fair View(Notre Dame de Belvezet), with a graceful apse (restored). From itssummit, or from the tall old watch-tower of the monastery, a marvelousview is obtained of the gaping ruins of the Charterhouse of Avignon, theCounty Venaissin, the Cevennes, Mount Ventoux, and the distant Alps.

In the later years of the monarchy a post of artillery was stationed inthe fort, and it was from the fire of a battery planted there that a youngcaptain of artillery, one Napoleon Bonaparte, in 1793, overawed the cityof Avignon, which was occupied by the Marseillais federalists who haddeclared against the Convention; and it was with the cannon seized at St.Andre that Bonaparte marched to Toulon and expelled the English from itsharbor.